Are you a pilot? A pilot-in-training? Are you dreaming of becoming a pilot? If so, this is the book for you.
Ken Ford is a physicist and a writer with a gift for making a subject come alive. In this book he draws on his fifty years of flying single-engine airplanes and more than twenty-five years of flying gliders.
Flying With and Without an Engine
In this memoir, Kenneth Ford provides tales from his own years of flying light airplanes and gliders, and he profiles various aviators he has met along the way, people who impressed him with their passion for flying and who brought a special style to their love affair with flying.
This book is for anyone of any age who is thinking about becoming a pilot, or is already one, or who just appreciates the romance of the air. It’s more than a collection of anecdotes. Ford is a teacher, and here you will learn, in non-technical language, about the kinds of lift that keep gliders aloft, the idiosyncrasies of “tail-dragger” airplanes, the art of landing in a crosswind, how pilots get from A to B, and more.
The book teaches as it delights. Ken tells of helping a rancher search for lost cattle in New Mexico, ferrying a corpse to Lubbock, Texas, landing without a radio at Washington National Airport, and soaring to 27,000 feet over Lake Tahoe.
As a glider pilot, Ken describes himself as an earnest amateur. The big smile shown on this page came after he flew a glider 500 kilometers in Nevada and California, a flight that helped him earn a diamond soaring badge.
REVIEWS
Ken Ford’s beautifully written new book could easily be subtitled “and the Wonderful People I’ve Met in the Air.” Ken’s love for flying has brought him into the extended family of fascinating people who share his passion for the air. In this book, Ken has done a wonderful job of sharing his lifetime of adventures and friendships with the reader. If you are a pilot, an enthusiast, or if you’ve just always wondered why your loved one is so interested in flight, you will be grateful that Ken has invited you along to meet his friends, share his adventures, and learn his lessons. I hope you enjoy his book as much as I have.
Phil Klauder
Soaring Magazine
Ford includes just enough technical information to interest the pilots, but uses plain language to make it interesting for the casual reader. In non-technical terms, he explains the evolution of navigation, flight terms and airplane equipment. Jerry Hoogerwerf [former manager of the Socorro, New Mexico airport and one of the people profiled in the book] said he loved reading the book and remembers Ford as a an adventurous and gifted pilot. “He was an avid flier and an excellent pilot,” Hoogerwerf said. “He really loved airplanes and flying. We did some flying together and he’d rent an airplane from me on occasion. He writes about aviation and aerodynamics and makes them easy to understand. It’s an interesting project and it’s well-written.”
Thomas Guengerich
Mountain Mail Newspaper
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